Where are the mod points when needed...

I must say that I have resisted new input devices for a long time - the mouse, touch screens, track pads.... virtual keyboards and found that each had its place, but none of them really took the place of the keyboard for data entry. I still prefer a full sized keyboard to type and a mini keyboard on a handheld device. They speed cannot be matched. Having a hybrid data-entry model with predictive text options, isn't a bad thing. The loss of a great technology such as a physical keyboard is - at least until virtual keyboards have a 3D with tactile element... more like holodeck than hologram.

Point taken.

IANAL but I don't think you are allowed to blackmail someone into signing a NDA. If they believed that a crime was committed, they are obliged to report it. By saying they will let you sign the agreement to get out of it, they are blackmailing you. If you discover that someone committed murder and state you will not report it if they do X - you have now committed a crime of your own.

Not the best source for legal advice, but http://www.ehow.com/info_8335199_legal-obligations-report-crime.html seems to cover this topic.

Or don't hide the audio recorder. Put it on the table and turn it on, ask them to repeat what they say.

I am sure amazon does not have the same contract as the small time developer and it will come down to licensing terms. They had to pull the link from within their old app before http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/amazon-others-cave-to-apple-on-in-app-purchases-today-html5-tomorrow/53116 so it was just a matter of time that they made it easy to purchase the apps on a phone conveniently. I don't see how this should even fall under terms of their license but I wouldn't be surprised if there weren't some broad reaching terms in the contract that apple will try to use as leverage.

Sorry, its definitely not what I was trying to state - just that absolute numbers matter as much as relative numbers matter - in there own way.

When choosing a surgeon - without the ability to get individual statistics - it would make more sense to go with the one graduating a higher proportion of highly skilled individuals; however, it is possible to get an individuals track record for many types of outcomes because they are part of a public record. In that case, it is easy to identify the 10% minority and may in fact be easier to get one of the surgeons from that school.

In the same sense, it is more likely that you will encounter well written papers by an Indian author IF you read all papers. With this example, I would read English Norwegian papers if I had limited time because they would be higher yield in terms of quality. If I were reading all papers, I would see many high quality papers coming out of India - in part by shear volume. Essentially stating that the good in India is being drowned out by a sea of mediocrity.

On a global scale, the majority of people from India are invisible as an internal colony of the wealthy. The implication of this is that the minority of Indians with a strong education and the ability to perform become representative of the nation and in this manner begin to matter. Its the same reason that China with its emerging middle class matters on a global scale. The much larger poverty stricken group in both countries allow for an exploitable underclass by the rich and middle class.

Being middle class in India means you can afford a staff of people to serve you much as slaves did In the US years ago or immigrants more recently. Its just that in the West, this population has remained low with the exception of nations that had extensive colonies (they just didn't count the large groups of exploited people as citizens). The fact that there are 9 uneducated people for every uneducated one doesn't make the 1/10 educated persons irrelevant.

With this, I think your analogy to a school would become a large university where only 10% are medical students to a medical college where 90% are medical students and perhaps 10% a health related occupation other than physician. From this, it becomes very easy to identify who you would go to for a surgery.

No, all I was trying to say is that you will find many Indians who are fluent in English and that the numbers as a percentage are irrelevant. The fact that there is an enormous population of Indians proficient in English makes this group relevant.

As for your example of the medical school, my statement would be more akin to picking from the top 10% of the school - not the bottom. The only other way I could take it is that you're implying English proficiency somehow implies this group is less capable. With that said, I would be willing to take a surgeon from a large school that has demonstrated proficiency at surgery even if it is known that there is a large cohort of people at the school without demonstrated proficiency - so long as a marker was set for determining a physicians capabilities. I would also be willing to take a surgeon from a smaller school that has a higher percentage of proficient surgeons so long as that individual was in the top 90% of that class.

Even with this example, you would be stating that you are far more likely to come across a proficient surgeon from the large school than you are to come across one from the smaller school.

So what your saying is Norway with just under 5,000,000 people has just under 90% of its population proficient in English (so just under 4.5 million while India with its 1.2 billion people has over 10% proficiency or a population of English speakers over 24 times the total population of Norway.

Numbers can be manipulated to make a lot of meaningless points. For example a random Norwegian may be more likely to be proficient in English, but an English speaker is more likely to be Indian.

The grandparent post refers to Indians as "among" the most fluent - which depending upon your point of view could mean a lot since the link you provided states India has the second largest population of English speakers. While it may not attest to the "average" Indian, I think sheer numbers would qualify the Indian people as being representative among the most fluent.

You mean like they did in med-school before obtaining their medical degree? At some point simulation has to stop and patient care has to begin. This is usually internship. You can talk about extending medical school for a longer period, but I don't think it would add a whole lot. Generally, people are trained well enough to assume the duties they are given.

There is a slow move to simulation based learning; however, most places have not yet adopted it. Its still the model of working with a senior doctor and taking on more responsibility during a procedure or patient care.

Also, the ACGME recently moved intern hours to essentially 16 by requiring nap time for anything longer.

I think your way of looking at the decay is not the way I would expect decay to occur. At each half-life, there is a 50% chance that base pair bonds are broken, so at one half life, I would expect a poisson distribution of base pair lengths that remain rather than at one half life for the chromosome to be broken in two. This would imply that at one half life most sequences will be single digits in length and that at 20 half lifes, there will be very few sequences longer than 2.

Also, they do show a relatively low correlation coefficient suggesting a good deal of variability in this decay rate. One pointed to factor looked at was temperature of ground soil, which for a mammoth preserved in frost may be a significantly longer period.

In soviet Russia, the standard chooses you!

While SMS pricing structure may be a cash cow, I really don't think its fair to say it costs them nothing. There may be no (or few) running costs associated with it; however, there are hefty baseline fees with maintaining the structure that is used. Just because they would maintain this anyway is not a reason to allow it to be free. That would be like saying fast food places should have to give away soda because they are makingf all this money on food and the soda doesn't cost them much anyways.

SMS may not be a heavy burden on the towers, but at its time, I think it was reasonable that they charge for each of the services they offered. There are currently smaller carriers that do not charge for SMS or even air time, but they may not have the best coverage area. I think that until the oligopoly of the towers is addressed, there will be little incentive for the larger carriers to find ways to squeeze money out of selected individuals (early adopters, corporations, heavy users of infrastructure).

so they can take credit for the oxygen atmosphere?

There is no need for a private key for the signature nor the need for a signature authority. If I were to give you a public key and I sent you a signed message, you could verify the message came from me as long as my private key was hidden from a third party.

This setup still requries C&C software, but as long as the C&C software is not distributed, each node can not initiate a command, but can propogate an already signed one. There would need to be a program that can insert a new signed command, but that need not be on every node. It would be much like gnutella - maintain a list of nodes to connect to and if you get in, you isue your command - disconnect from the network and you can reconnect at will from another IP address.

Xanax is a relatively new invention. Good thing its available as a generic